A Shortcut for Fruitcakes and Holiday Sweets

As hands-on as you may be in the kitchen, making your own candied fruit might be taking ambition too far. I’ve done it and it’s a complex, time-consuming task that calls for boiling fruit or fruit peels in sugar syrup over and over again until the sugar replaces the water in the fruit. At King Arthur Flour in Vermont, they’ve assembled a nice shortcut with a package of evenly diced orange and lemon peels, golden raisins and cranberries. It’s a follow-up to their fruitcake mix of currants, raisins, dates, pineapple and cranberries, but it’s better with the citrus peels: King Arthur Flour Yuletide Cheer Fruit Blend, eight ounces, $12.95, kingarthurflour.com.